Hitch (Will Smith) is a Date Doctor, manipulating women into relationships with men, and he refuses to help a guy who only wants a one night stand with a nice girl. Only, he’s a romantic, so it’s supposedly not as creepy as that sounds. Sara (Eva Mendes) is a gossip columnist, but she’s got a heart of gold, and only exposes the nasty happenings in the life of superstar Allegra (Amber Valletta) to give her a better life. In Sara’s mind. Hitch meets Sara and they start an ongoing flirt. Meanwhile, Hitch is setting Albert (Kevin James), an overweight boring accountant with Allegra.
It’s a pretty standard romantic comedy. Some fun times, some humour, a lot of flaws and some seriously questionable attitudes toward the women involved. I wanted to like it a lot more than I did because I like so many of the cast, but I just found it just average.
Dracula lives in a hotel he has built for all kinds of monsters to keep them safe from humans, who all monsters fear. His daughter is about to turn 118, and is ready to travel the world. Dracula does not want her to go, but he manages to scare her into staying, and he and his monster mates throw her a huge party. However, a spanner is thrown into the works when a real human manages to stumble into the hotel, despite all of Dracula’s safeguards.
I generally enjoy films aimed at a young audience. Generally; although I usually find something to rile me up and get annoyed about. Like, the lion in Madagascar who is trying to be vegetarian. Lions don’t have a choice. Don’t be ridiculous. And don’t get me started on Happy Feet. Hotel Transylvania hasn’t really got enough depth of content for me to get truly riled up. However, I do get cross about the representation of men in these cartoons.
Yes, the representation of men. I see myself as a feminist, and get annoyed that the women are all shown with huge, cute eyes and limbs so slender they’d snap if you gave them a decent high-five, but it is the men that annoy me. Why do they all have to look so stupid? And act so stupid? Oh, did you see Brave recently? Not a decent man in the whole film. Idiots and losers. What is wrong with the world? Why can’t we have decent cartoon men?
Oops. I see there is enough in this to get me ranting. Apologies. Back to some semblance of a review.
The human that stumbles in is a stoner backpacker with no respect for the culture he has come across, who instead seeks to change the culture rather than simply observing or partaking in it. Too much of an intellectual read into it? Probably. The more I think about the film, the less I liked it. There are funny moments, but not enough to make it worth watching. I didn’t like the story, I didn’t like the characters. The only thing I liked was trying to figure out who was doing the voices. Didn’t really have much luck with that either. Nope, overall, I just didn’t like this film. But perhaps I’m finally outgrowing kids films.
Hotel Transylvania was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film.
ireckonthat 